Improvement: All four computers upon which I have tested the newest version, beta three, now boot. Hurrah. One bug fixed.

However, the same problem which I described a couple days ago, remains. All of these older, PIII computers, now commence the boot process, but then (watching in the verbose mode by pressing the ESC key) on reaching the "login as root" phase of the operation, a long pause occurs, followed by a message that the system is changing to run level 6, whereupon the devices eject the CD, and reboot the computer. This problem remains unchanged from the Beta 2 version. This problem does not occur with a more modern computer. I would note that two of the four computers which demonstrate this behaviour possess SATA add on cards and SATA drives, the other two use a plain vanilla IDE controller and IDE drive. I mention this only because of the message at boot time with respect to SATA.

I have noticed a few problems so far:1. after using the back button during installation the next button was not active2. using vasm to create a new user has "netdev: needed for wicd taskbar applet" as one of the defaults but this causes an error "useradd: unknown group netdev" which halts the useradd process3. suspend to RAM or Disk (using KDE's menu) just locks the screen; beta 2's suspend to RAM worked but to Disk locked the screen

Mike

Logged

The plans of the diligent lead to profit...Pro. 21:5VL64 7.1b3 RLU 486143

The installation went okay, no problems like I had a couple of releases ago. I was unhappy that the boot options for LILO still did not include a floppy disk. I have to choose "none" and reboot withlinux root=/dev/hde6 rousing the CD. Then I'm able to install LILO on a floppy through VASM.

USER IDs ARE STILL NUMBERED STARTING AT 1001!!!! Forgive the shouting, but this makes a total MESS if we're mounting a system with an earlier version of VL where the USERID starts at 1000. You can't get access to your /home directory on the mounted partition of an earlier VL. This complicates nfs networking and makes it impossible to access your /home directory on an nfs-networked computer.

So when I found to my horror that my user account was AGAIN numbered at 1001 instead of 1000, I looked for the place to change it. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to edit a user account. Google was my friend as usual and I discovered I could change this at /etc/passwd and /etc/group. It seemed to need a reboot to get the number changed.

Possibly related to this user ID thing, I can't start X as user. Or I may just have a problem similar to some reports here. I tried to switch from HAL to VL-HOT, but when I rebooted I couldn't get a GUI at all, not even to log in. Just a blank screen with no keyboard or mouse operational, requiring me to press the OFF button on the computer. So I started in tui mode and switched back to HAL. Now the GUI starts, but I can't get KDE running as user. When I try to log in, I get an error window that says "kstartupconfig4 does not exist or could be " (the rest doesn't fit in the unresizable message box). If I log in as root, KDE starts fine, no error messages. I figure this is a permission problem. I couldn't see what I might change in kstartupconfig4. Being unwilling to run as user, I didn't try much of anything in KDE. I wonder if this problem is related to the user ID I had to change.

I can't start the GUI if I log in with run level 2. I prefer run level 2 but if I try to startx, I get a "cannot open display 'default display'", which I have no idea how to get around.

So I'm dead in the water until I'm able to run KDE as user. I'm running beta 3 on my 1.3 GHz Celeron Tualatin with an ATI Radeon 9200 video card with 128 megs of video RAM.

A couple of comments on the installer:*When it asks what to do with the selected partition where you will install, it would probably be confusing to many newbies. The dropdowns for Mountpoint are meaningless to anyone not familiar with mounting. I've installed VL dozens of times and I got confused by that dropdown.

*Then choosing the format type would be very difficult for a newbie. There is no explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of the various options. I chose ext3 because I'm familiar with it (as well as ext2 and reiserfs). But I have no idea why I might choose ext4 or xfs or the other one--which I've never heard of before. The Help button did offer a a bit of information on the mount point but nothing on the file systems. --GrannyGeek

The installation went okay, no problems like I had a couple of releases ago. I was unhappy that the boot options for LILO still did not include a floppy disk. I have to choose "none" and reboot withlinux root=/dev/hde6 rousing the CD. Then I'm able to install LILO on a floppy through VASM.

USER IDs ARE STILL NUMBERED STARTING AT 1001!!!! Forgive the shouting, but this makes a total MESS if we're mounting a system with an earlier version of VL where the USERID starts at 1000. You can't get access to your /home directory on the mounted partition of an earlier VL. This complicates nfs networking and makes it impossible to access your /home directory on an nfs-networked computer.

So when I found to my horror that my user account was AGAIN numbered at 1001 instead of 1000, I looked for the place to change it. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to edit a user account. Google was my friend as usual and I discovered I could change this at /etc/passwd and /etc/group. It seemed to need a reboot to get the number changed.

Possibly related to this user ID thing, I can't start X as user. Or I may just have a problem similar to some reports here. I tried to switch from HAL to VL-HOT, but when I rebooted I couldn't get a GUI at all, not even to log in. Just a blank screen with no keyboard or mouse operational, requiring me to press the OFF button on the computer. So I started in tui mode and switched back to HAL. Now the GUI starts, but I can't get KDE running as user. When I try to log in, I get an error window that says "kstartupconfig4 does not exist or could be " (the rest doesn't fit in the unresizable message box). If I log in as root, KDE starts fine, no error messages. I figure this is a permission problem. I couldn't see what I might change in kstartupconfig4. Being unwilling to run as user, I didn't try much of anything in KDE. I wonder if this problem is related to the user ID I had to change.

I can't start the GUI if I log in with run level 2. I prefer run level 2 but if I try to startx, I get a "cannot open display 'default display'", which I have no idea how to get around.

So I'm dead in the water until I'm able to run KDE as user. I'm running beta 3 on my 1.3 GHz Celeron Tualatin with an ATI Radeon 9200 video card with 128 megs of video RAM.

A couple of comments on the installer:*When it asks what to do with the selected partition where you will install, it would probably be confusing to many newbies. The dropdowns for Mountpoint are meaningless to anyone not familiar with mounting. I've installed VL dozens of times and I got confused by that dropdown.

*Then choosing the format type would be very difficult for a newbie. There is no explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of the various options. I chose ext3 because I'm familiar with it (as well as ext2 and reiserfs). But I have no idea why I might choose ext4 or xfs or the other one--which I've never heard of before. The Help button did offer a a bit of information on the mount point but nothing on the file systems. --GrannyGeek

I have a question about your kde issue on the part of the config. Before the question though, I wanted to let people know that you can put the cursor into that window and "click n drag" the mouse to see the rest of that line. Pretty much it says check installation because the file does not exist, etc. ,etc.

Now the question is... During installation, at the user setup, did you select to reset everything in that list?If you did this this, then there lies the problem. I have to run through the instller again to be accurate, but I believe that skipping the selection to ".KDE" will work well for you.

Since you've probably done as said here's a quick fix -- sort of.AS ROOT: Remove your ~Home/.kde Now switch user and login under the username. KDE will generate files. After desktop loads, log out.(back to root) Copy from etc/skel/share/config. Open the config and copy all files to your config overwriting when prompted. It is important NOT to replace the config directory, but the contents from within. Now you'll need to edit the permissions of this directory to make it readable and writeable by ALL +all files and sub diectories.Note: this last step may have be of some security issue, but is better than trying to guess which files in there should be done this way and not .... better to do the skip mentiond above.

I think we may have a fix for this, but we have yet to do internal testing on it. Thanks so much for the report.

I have a question about your kde issue on the part of the config. Before the question though, I wanted to let people know that you can put the cursor into that window and "click n drag" the mouse to see the rest of that line. Pretty much it says check installation because the file does not exist, etc. ,etc.

Thanks. I was able to drag the message text to see the entire error message. It is "kstartupconfig4 does not exist or fails. The error code is 3. Check your installation." This happens only when I try to log in as user. I cannot start KDE as user but KDE starts fine as root. I have not yet googled on that message to see if I can discover a solution.

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Now the question is... During installation, at the user setup, did you select to reset everything in that list?If you did this this, then there lies the problem. I have to run through the instller again to be accurate, but I believe that skipping the selection to ".KDE" will work well for you.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are suggesting. What do you mean by "at user setup"? Presumably, when I was setting up myself as user. I didn't reset anything, but I did check off all the groups for me as user. What would be the problem? Surely we can select anything we want at user setup. Anything else would make no sense. Also, what does "skipping the selection to .KDE" mean? I don't recall seeing anything like that at user setup. I did a custom install and deselcted the ATI and NVidia drivers because they don't apply to my hardware. The only skippable things I recall were Gparted and the boot loader.

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Since you've probably done as said here's a quick fix -- sort of.AS ROOT: Remove your ~Home/.kde Now switch user and login under the username. KDE will generate files. After desktop loads, log out.(back to root) Copy from etc/skel/share/config. Open the config and copy all files to your config overwriting when prompted. It is important NOT to replace the config directory, but the contents from within. Now you'll need to edit the permissions of this directory to make it readable and writeable by ALL +all files and sub diectories.Note: this last step may have be of some security issue, but is better than trying to guess which files in there should be done this way and not .... better to do the skip mentiond above.

I tried to do this but I can't. As root I renamed my ~/.kde to .kdeOriginal, logged out, and tried to log in as user. I got the same error message about kstartupconfig4 and could not start KDE as user. The desktop does not load and KDE did not generate files. I'll try renaming kdeOriginal to plain kde and copying the files from /etc/skel, but since I can't get to the desktop as user, Step 1 didn't work. Is there a quick command to make ~/.kde read-writable by all users? As I already said, I have no idea what "the skip mentioned above" is, that is, what I'm supposed to skip.

I wonder why I'm having this problem and it doesn't seem other people are getting it. I did a straightforward installation.

I'm writing this from my user account with Opera in Beta 3! As I said before, I was not able to get into my user account. From root, I copied the contents of /etc/skel/.kde/config/ to the /.kde directory in my user home. Then I noticed that at least some of the files had that incorrect UID of 1001. So I ran Konqueror and changed ownership to my user name and username group for the my entire user home directory and had Konqueror change them for all subdirectories and files in my home directory. I didn't change permissions, just ownership. Then I logged out as root and logged back in as user.

This time KDE started fine. No error messages.

So I think my suspicion was correct--that changing my UID from 1001 to 1000 messed things up. Really, something has to be done about this new thing of numbering the first user as 1001. I have three installations of VectorLinux on this computer and three on other computers where my UID is 1000. They are all networked with nfs and I can't get into my home directories on the other computers or this computer unless my UIDs match. I certainly don't want to change my UID on all those other installations to 1001 so they match my UID on this KDE Beta 3. Plus I'd have to change *other* UIDs on those computers because they already have users with UIDs of 1001.

So far everything seems to be working in Beta 3--video OK (using xorg radeon driver), sound worked out of the box, network fine (no wireless here), I haven't set up the printers or scanner yet.

Do we know yet whether XFce works in VL 6 SOHO? I would like to install 6 SOHO when it goes final but I don't care for KDE (never have) and want XFce as my desktop environment. I do want KDE libraries, as I always install at least kdebase and kdelibs regardless of what desktop I'm using.--GrannyGeek

I've already had a moan about the UID selection. While I don't like it, there is a workaround, so long as you are prepared.

What I've done for the last couple of beta's is skip creating a user. Once the installation is finished, start in TUI mode, log in as root and use Vasm to create your user. That will do the job properly and use UID 1000. Not nice, but at least it gets round the problem.

I do hope this gets properly fixed though - I really don't like the work around one little bit.